Palm Tree punish floundering Whale

It was a beautiful day, a scenic ground and a reasonable pitch for the Whalers final game of the season against new opposition, Palm Tree CC. That’s the positives done.

Jack won the toss and elected to bowl, and for a while things were going ok, Nick, fired up and bowling to his mate Pat in the opposition got his man bowled, but not before Pat had hit a couple of cracking drives. Rakesh opening from the other end also chipped in with an early wicket. From there the droppsies kicked in, no fewer than 8 dropped catches and a missed stumping and against a good batting line up this would prove disastrous. At drinks things were fairly evenly balanced at 3 down for 70 odd but after drinks things unravelled. The slower bowlers struggled and the oppo moved the scoring rate up several gears, wickets did continue to fall, Dean, Geoff, Josh and Matt all holding on to good catches, Matt’s a particularly good effort diving forwards near the boundary, but runs were being leaked at an alarming rate and amongst the catches were the many drops and numerous incidents of poor fielding. Injuries were also mounting up, Rakesh struggling with a quad injury and Nick dislocating a finger. Palm Tree finished with 239 off 35 overs, too many.

Resuming after Tea things immediately got worse, Dean went LBW to the spinner in the second over and Will followed shortly after. Kamal promoted to 3 was showing some grit but was undone by a straight one. Matt joined Geoff and they tried to rebuild, Geoff lofted a straight four and Matt nicely carved a couple of boundaries through point but that was as good as it got, Geoff hit one too many off the toe of the bat finally causing it to cave in and then didn’t need the replacement, missing a straight one, departing for a top score of 21. wickets continued to tumble, including a couple of run outs and mercifully the end came quickly. Whalers all out for 70 = big loss.

Champagne moment – Matt for his diving catch on the boundary

Muppet moment – amongst many candidates, Dean for his no nonsense ‘dog whispering’ skills when a dog came onto the pitch and threatened to pick up the ball

M.o.M – Nick, 7-19-1 (though to note the award was self nominated and claimed without chance for discussion)